Boeing's been in sorry shape for years, and won’t wake up

Alaska Airlines CEO says loose bolts found on ‘many’ of its Boeing planes after near-disaster

The CEO of Alaska Airlines has ripped Boeing in the wake of the recent near-disaster, revealing that loose bolts were found on “many” of the company’s 737 MAX 9 planes.

CEO Ben Minicucci said that a new in-house inspection of the Boeing model in the fleet has uncovered that “many” of the planes had loose bolts.

“I’m angry. I’m more than frustrated and disappointed. I am angry,” Minicucci told NBC News Tuesday. “This happened to Alaska Airlines. It happened to our guests and happened to our people.

“And my demand on Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house,” he added. “Boeing is better than this. Flight 1282 should never have happened.”

The CEO’s interview was the first since a door plug on an Alaska Airlines-owned 737 MAX 9 carrying 177 people lost a door plug in the skies over Oregon during a flight to California on Jan. 5, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.

The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered all MAX 9 jets grounded and launched a safety investigation.

The agency also announced an audit of the plane’s production line and suppliers “to evaluate Boeing’s compliance with its approved quality procedures.”  

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker told CNBC that the agency has “boots on the ground” at Boeing’s 737 MAX factory, adding that the staffers will remain there until they are convinced that the quality control system is up to snuff.

“We’ve got a lot of inspectors on the ground, visually inspecting the aircraft as it comes through,” Whitaker told the outlet Tuesday at FAA headquarters. “We’re shifting from more of an audit approach to a direct inspection approach.

Meanwhile, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby also expressed frustration with Boeing, telling CNBC that it is contemplating a future for its fleet without the 737 MAX 10.

“I think the MAX 9 grounding is probably the straw that broke the camel’s back for us,” he said. “We’re going to build a plan that doesn’t have the Max 10 in it.”

United has also said it found additional loose bolts on its MAX 9 jets.

“I’m disappointed that… this keeps happening at Boeing. This isn’t new,” Kirby told CNBC. “We need Boeing to succeed. But they’ve been having these consistent manufacturing challenges. They need to take action here.”

2019:

Boeing tanker jets grounded due to tools and debris left during manufacturing

Originally published February 28, 2019 at 11:00 am Updated February 28, 2019 at 3:51 pm

Boeing was forced to ground its 767-based KC-46 tankers for the past week after the Air Force expressed concern about loose tools and bits of debris found in various locations inside the completed airplanes, according to internal company memos.

“We have USAF pilots here for flight training and they will not fly due to the FOD (foreign object debris) issues and the current confidence they have in our product that has been discovered throughout the aircraft,” factory management wrote in a Feb. 21 memo to employees on the 767 assembly line.

“This is a big deal,” the memo emphasized.

The lapse in standards raises questions about Boeing’s plan for a major shift in its quality-control procedures.

…. During the process of building aircraft, all airframes are supposed to be routinely swept for any kind of foreign object debris — especially anything metal. A loose object left, say, inside a wall cavity or under a floor, is potentially dangerous because over time it could damage equipment or cause an electrical short.

“The 767 program has been scrambling to get our employees down south … to the MDC to clean FOD from our delivered tankers to get our aircraft back in the air,” the memo states.

The memo notes that eight tools were found in aircraft delivered to the MDC and two more in tankers delivered to the U.S. Air Force.

Another memo said repeated finding of FOD by the Air Force was “a chronic issue” that has “resulted in a program level impact.”

Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Hope Cronin said the military is “aware of the concerns over FOD in KC-46 production aircraft” and takes such contamination “very seriously.”

“The combined Air Force, Defense Contract Management Agency, and Boeing team is working together to resolve these concerns as safely and quickly as possible,” Cronin said via email.

Making sure that no foreign object debris makes its way onto a finished airplane is the responsibility of every mechanic who works on the plane but also of the quality inspectors, whose job is to do a final check on any area of an airplane before it is closed up.

What seems to be a serious lapse in FOD control comes as Boeing says it intends to cut almost 1,000 quality inspectors jobs over the next two years.

Quality inspectors concerned about that move pointed recently to Boeing’s failure in December of one element of a quality-control audit on the 747, 767 and 777 airplane programs.

Management said the MDC “has declared a level 3” state of alert on the Everett assembly line over the KC-46 FOD issue. On a scale embedded in Boeing’s defense contracts, this level is one step away from a complete shutdown of the assembly line, the memo makes clear.

“Does anyone know what a level four is?” the management memo asks. “A level four … will shut down our factory. This is a big deal.”

And remember the 737 Max crashes? Boeing apparently doesn’t.

AND:

Safety regulators in the US have identified a further problem in Boeing’s grounded 737 Max model and the generation of planes that preceded it.

The Federal Aviation Administration has told airlines to check more than 300 737 aircraft, including 179 of the Max model, for improperly manufactured parts.

The affected components – part of the wing – help provide lift during takeoff and landing, and “may be susceptible to premature failure or cracks resulting from the improper manufacturing process”, the FAA said on Sunday.

The 737 Max, Boeing’s top-selling passenger jet, was taken out of service in March after the second fatal crash in four months. A total of 346 people died in the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air disasters.